Users or compute nodes typically interact with data stored in network attached storage (NAS) through use of a distributed file system, which is a computer program providing routines to access and manipulate data stored in NAS. Well-known examples include the Hadoop File System (HDFS) and the Network File System (NFS) protocols. The three primary concerns with NAS are security, efficiency, and ease of use. Security means allowing only authorized persons or machines to access data, efficiency means that data access should be as fast as possible, and ease of use means that accessing data in NAS should be simple for application programmers. However, conventional data storage architectures do not provide an efficient solution that addresses all of these requirements without any trade-offs. Additionally, current data storage architectures cannot provide efficient data storage access in a shared environment in support of semi-structured, heterogeneously-typed sensor data with ease of use.